Apple sued for antitrust

Apple has been sued for maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.

Plaintiff, Stacie Sommers, claims that Apple dominates the market for online video, online music, and digital music players and that its dominance constitutes a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Her attorneys want to have her lawsuit certified as a class action.

According to paperwork prepared by Sommers, Apple has engaged in tying and monopolizing behavior, placing unneeded and unjustifiable technological restrictions on its most popular products in an effort to restrict consumer choice, and to restrain what little remains of its competition in the digital music markets.

She added that Apple's CEO, Steve Job,s had himself compared Apple's digital music dominance to Microsoft's operating system dominance, calling Apple's Music Store 'the Microsoft of music stores' in a meeting with financial analysts.

The complaint takes issue with Apple's refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format.